The He’art’ of Learning

The Tech Mahindra Foundation sponsored Mandal Parishal Primary School, in partnership with RDF bring to you more fun, interesting and creative experiments from their school.

A student displaying her peacock made with recycled & waste materials

Experiential learning or ‘learning by doing’ is the best way to help children understand any subject or theme. The teachers decided to explore the theme of ‘Art’ with the students using discarded and waste materials. It started with reflection and discussion of how humans produce waste and how it degrades the environment. This led to the idea behind using waste material like papers, packaging boxes, discarded bottles, plastic etc for recycling. The teachers asked them to think about how these materials can be recycled and use their imagination and creativity to produce art from waste. That got them excited!

A lovely butterfly made from waste materials

During their discussion, the children got ideas to make toys. This is the beauty of encouraging children to reflect on their lives and ways of living and organically come up with ways in which such materials could be useful to them. Children and toys – the idea was perfect!

They made a peacock using scrap paper, designing them into the letters of the alphabet and joining them to get the body of the peacock. Then old plastic spoons were used to form the feathers. A beautiful and colourful butterfly was also fashioned in a similar way. Very soon, ideas were flowing about using old cardboard boxes, plastic bottles etc. Not only the teachers, but the kids too were thrilled with themselves, appreciating each others’ ideas and creativity to create wonderful items of art!